World Wide Web sites (“web sites”) can be provider-driven or consumer-driven. The provider-driven system can post content in a language, and holds itself out to the consumer using untargeted or generalized consumer data. The consumer-driven system seeks out the seller using real or targeted consumer data.
Web sites can include passive and active formats. A passive site provides information about the content/product in a language (e.g., English) and directs consumers to places where they can obtain the content/product.
An active site provides information as well as permits the consumer to communicate and conduct a transaction over a network, e.g., the Internet, to obtain information or to purchase a product/service. This information is commonly presented and accessed in a single language on a given site.
Conducting web based searches for a specific product, service or information can be a time-consuming process. This process is compounded when trying to conduct searches for information world wide. When attempting to communicate or search globally, a consumer may fail to obtain desired information, or complete a product-related transaction if such consumer does not understand the language over the site.
Today, close to a billion Internet users will access and provide web pages in a multitude of languages. There are currently many approaches to globalization of commercial web sites including web language to language translation dictionaries. Some companies provide expensive full text translation in many languages for their sites, but this is not viable for most companies.
Consequently, consumers can become quickly disenchanted with search results with little control over the nature and amount of content provided in response to their particular search query. Current approaches, do not easily address the globalization problems for businesses with commercial web pages that post content and/or transact in a single language format.
Translation resources render the obtained information useful and some prior approaches in the art have been employed to aid the client/consumer in translation. One product allows a client to customize definitions of particular words and phrases that occur on a web page requiring one to leave the web page to obtain the definition from a source. Another provides limited translation of user-selected words but is not integrated into providers' web pages and requires downloaded software to be resident and executable on the client side.
In many instances, the consumer would need to exit the viewed page and spend considerable time using the reference information to make the information useful and thus has a negative impact to the user. After exiting the page, there is a high likelihood that the potential consumer will never return to the page having been effectively deterred by the tasks of translation.
One system contemplates using a client-side Web browser, wherein a user selects a desired text by copying the text from a Web page, and pasting it to a text field in a reference window that is integrated into the Web page, and that is linked to an information retrieval function. The user can select from a plurality of reference sources and/or translation language pairs whereby the user-selected reference source or user-selected translation language pair is accessible by the information retrieval function. The reference sources include dictionaries. For example, the user preference for a particular translation language pair is selected using a scrollable language pair field of a linked dictionary window.
The information relating to user-selected text of World Wide Web site pages consists of high quality multi-lingual translations, explanations, or consolidated automatic multi-dictionary definitions, wherein such information is displayed to the user in text, voice, image or multi-media formats. The information retrieval function includes an Internet search engine operative with the information retrieval function to search the Internet in accordance with the user-selected text, and the user-selected reference source or user-selected translation language pair, whereby the information retrieval function is augmented. While this attempt appeared to be a step in the right direction, the search potentially returns many irrelevant web pages.
There remains a continued need to improve web searching and communication tools so that the consumer can reach a more global market base in a more user defined manner which sifts out unwanted sources of information. An improved tool is needed to enable websites to effectively communicate information to a potential consumer/client, as opposed to misdirecting over-inclusive information to the consumer/client and unnecessarily transmitting data due to an overly inclusive search query in a plurality of languages, i.e., and traffic management.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for cost-effective methods of high quality globalization of commercial web sites. There is a need in the art to render HTML pages obtained over the Internet more accessible and responsive to the multi-lingual characteristics of users. There is a need in the art for methods of web site searching and communication over the Internet using improved techniques. There is a need in the art to reduce the amount of client-side processing involved with conducting searches.